Jews in Russia Threatened by Soviet General Who Joined Hitler’s Forces

June 1, 1943

STOCKHOLM (May. 31)

Joining the Nazi anti-Jewish crusade, General Andrei Vlassov, the Russian commander who surrendered to the Germans and was appointed by the Nazis as “chief of the Committee to Liberate Russia” today announced that Jews will be deprived of all their rights in Russia should he ever succeed in “liberating” it.

Speaking at a meeting in Riga, capital of Nazi-held Latvia, the renegade General told his audience that “all nationalities in Russia, except the Jews,” will be permitted to carry on their own national life. “The Jews were the main supporters of Bolshevism and must pay for plunging the Russian people into disaster.” he declared. His speech, delivered in Russian, was broadcast to Russia,the Nazi Transocean news agency reported.

Provincial leaders of the Nazi Party were told today by Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Front, to continue their merciless persecution of the Jews “with more vigor” and to always remember that “the annihilation of the Jews will lead to German victory.”

“It is either we, or the Jews,” Ley said speaking before a conference of Nazi officials held in Cologne, the official German news agency DNB reported. “All those who enter the ranks of the National Socialist Party must remember that they have burned their boats and that there is no road back for them. Even if they were ready to return to the old world, it would not be possible for them to do so, because the Jews, ruling that world, would never forgive them.”

The last and hardest phase of our crusade against the Jews is yet to come,” Ley continued. “We have a very difficult struggle to conclude, but we shall bring it to a victorious conclusion. Our attitude towards the Jews remains and will always be ‘either they or we.”

The Hamburger Fremdenblatt, which arrived here today, carries a report disclosing that there is still “an unknown number of Jews residing in the ghetto in Lodz.” Most of these Jews are employed in textile factories working on German war orders and operated by Berlin-controlled industrial corporations. Operation of these factories would prove difficult if the skilled Jewish textile workers were deported from Lodz, the Nazi paper explains.